


a past to bury

by islndgurl777



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, M/M, ghost!Tripp, i've found my niche and apparently it's writing dead characters standing by and feeling useless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:53:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24795736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/islndgurl777/pseuds/islndgurl777
Summary: Five times Tripp is forced to stand by and watch, plus one time he doesn't have to do it alone.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, Tripp Manes/Nora Truman
Comments: 38
Kudos: 172





	a past to bury

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Still/The Neva Flows (Reprise) from the Anastasia Broadway soundtrack. Unbeta'd because I was too impatient to wait for one.
> 
> I made [this post](https://islndgurl777.tumblr.com/post/621063544206688256/tripp-manes-in-the-afterlife-fuming-from-his) the other night after the finale, and then spent 45 minutes lying in bed thinking about how I could turn it into a fic. I have a thing for writing fics from the perspective of dead characters, apparently.

1

One minute they’re arguing, Harlan throwing out accusations about Tripp being an “alien sympathizer” and corrupting his grandson with the “preposterous notion of showing those parasites compassion and understanding instead of treating them as the threat they are!” The next, Tripp’s feeling strangely weightless, a relentless buzzing filling his head as he glances down and sees his brother standing over his dead body.

“Well, shit,” he murmurs, the buzzing blocking out any other thoughts for the moment.

Tripp stands by and watches, feeling strangely detached, as Harlan first hides his body, then goes about building a shed behind his house so he can bury Tripp’s body beneath it. There’s a consistent, low level of horror that runs through Tripp as he watches his brother’s face throughout his attempt to conceal his crime.

Harlan doesn’t appear to be remorseful at all. With every board he nails up and every piece of glass he fits into frame, Harlan has the look of someone who is completing a distasteful chore. He’s completing his task with a vicious efficiency that tells Tripp his brother only regrets killing him because of the inconvenience of the cleanup.

The horror builds the longer Tripp watches, disgust over what his brother has done warring with an inexplicable panic until he finally remembers how their argument had started in the first place. Tripp had taken Jesse to the diner with the intention of asking him to look after the children when they emerged from their pods, since he and Louise likely wouldn’t be around to do so. 

His eyes widen and he staggers back, panic growing. “No,” he chokes out. He’d _promised_. He’d told Nora, and later Louise, that he’d find someone he could trust with their secret, someone who could protect their children.

But the secret has died with him, and there’ll be no one there to keep Nora’s son and the other two kids safe.

He’d been watching his brother cover up his murder in a haze of confusion, disappointment, and sorrow, but as he remembers the vital task he’d been prevented from fulfilling, all he can feel toward his brother is rage.

As Harlan puts his finishing touches on the shed, Tripp stares him down, fists gripped tight at his sides and a wordless growl building in his chest.

2

Tripp is there when the children emerge from their pods, though of course he can be of no help to them. 

They don’t speak, just as Nora and Louise hadn’t spoken when they’d first arrived, but Tripp knows they don’t need to speak to communicate. The little blonde girl (god, she looks just like Louise) takes both of the boys’ hands and leads them out of the cave and into the desert.

The boy on her right, dark hair and dark eyes, tries to trail behind, but she keeps pulling him along. There’s a hunted look in the child’s eyes that has Tripp holding his breath, wondering if he’s going to lash out at the other two.

The boy on her left has curly hair and Nora’s eyes, which sweep the desert back and forth, taking everything in. He places himself slightly ahead of the other two, as if to protect them from what’s ahead.

For the millionth time, Tripp curses himself for waiting too long to find someone to take care of them, because now they’re all alone, with no idea of the dangers they’re up against.

3

When he realizes the kind of man Jesse has turned out to be, Tripp feels a little of that guilt ease. If he’d told Jesse, the kids would have ended up at Caulfield.

When he realizes Jesse’s son has invited Nora’s son to stay in his shed instead of living out of his truck, Tripp feels a profound sense of relief. Maybe there _are_ good Manes men, and maybe this is the one who will do what he couldn’t and protect the aliens.

When Alex leans in and tries to kiss Michael, who leans away with a look of mild panic in his eyes, Tripp has to smother a laugh. There’s a great deal of irony in the fact that a Manes just tried to kiss an alien in the shed that was built to cover up the murder of a Manes who was killed for wanting to kiss an alien.

4

Jesse doesn’t tell Alex about Project Shepherd, probably because he always knew Alex would be opposed to it. Tripp watches and waits for years, hoping Alex will be read in, because if anyone has the ability and courage to take it down from the inside, it’s Alex.

A weight lifts from Tripp’s shoulders when Alex figures it out on his own and blackmails Jesse out of the picture. The hope that builds in his chest can’t be contained and he finds himself practically stalking Alex as he learns more about the hated project and takes measures to burn all of it to the ground. 

Because he’s been sticking close to Alex, Tripp is there when Michael throws out the word “cosmic” to describe the connection between him and Alex.

The word feels like a punch to the throat, and Tripp staggers, chest constricting. He knows that feeling intimately. Has felt it whenever he looks at Nora, from the first moment he saw her to the last time he visited her in her cell at Caulfield.

Hearing it from her son to describe how he feels about Alex, another Manes Airman, Tripp turns away and lets a ragged, pained yell out into the vast, blue New Mexico sky. When he’s done, chest heaving with his helpless anger and tears pricking at his eyes, he leaves.

He needs to see Nora.

5

Tripp hasn’t been able to bring himself to leave for days. He sits in the corner of Nora’s cell and watches her sleep, watches her sit, watches her pace the three strides across her cell and back. 

Watches her skip-step-turn across the cell, the barest hint of a smile on her face as she attempts a dance in the space between her bed and the wall of the cell. Once she gets into a rhythm, he starts humming a tune, making a guess about the song running through her head. Perhaps the one from the radio, the day they went for ice cream and he chickened out of taking her hand in his.

Throat tight, he stands up and steps in, hands hovering over her waist, and they spin around her cell, two pieces of a puzzle that nearly fit together, but can’t quite connect.

Too soon, she starts coughing and has to sit down to rest. Her smile fades and tears spring to her eyes as she lays down and buries her face in her hands. 

Tripp watches helplessly, tears streaming down his own face, as she cries herself to sleep.

Minutes or hours or days later, they turn to see Michael on the other side of the cell door. If Tripp still had a beating heart it would have stopped. As it is, he’s frozen in place as he watches Nora’s eyes rove over him, just taking in her grown-up son.

A while later, when the alarms are blaring, Tripp can’t stand still. He’s pacing around Michael, cursing and yelling at him to get out of there while he still can. That’s when Alex finally comes hurtling down the stairs, yelling for him, saying they need to go. 

“Thank God,” Tripp breathes out, running a shaky hand through his hair.

But they don’t leave. Michael won’t leave his mother and Alex won’t leave Michael, and panic builds in Tripp’s chest because he’s going to have to stand by and watch _all_ of them die.

Until Nora puts her hand on the cracked glass that separates her from her son. She sends him a message through the glass and he turns back to Alex, shock written on his face. “She said she loves me. And then she said to run.”

The alarms continue blaring; they have less than a minute before everything explodes. “Run!” Tripp screams, a desperate sob building in his throat. He doesn’t want everything they’ve been through to be for nothing. It _has_ to turn out better for them than it had for him and Nora.

Alex and Michael bolt for the stairs and Tripp turns away with a relieved sigh, lifting his hands to hover over Nora’s cheeks, eyes tracing over every inch of her face as the alarm counts down to zero.

+1

“What are they doing?” Nora asks, tilting her head as she watches Alex and Michael start hacking into the walls of the shed.

Tripp squeezes her hand, clearing a lump from his throat before he says, “They’re destroying the origin of their relationship’s trauma.” And a part of his own, he supposes, smiling softly.

“I see,” she says, nodding approvingly. They continue to quietly watch the boys tear down the shed until she asks, voice nearly a whisper, “Do you think it will help them move on, find a way back to each other?”

He sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t know.” She turns to him and he lifts their clasped hands to press a kiss to the back of hers. She smiles softly, eyes shining up at him, and he says, “But I hope so.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are appreciated! I'm also [on tumblr](https://islndgurl777.tumblr.com/)!


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